Update on Lebanon sites

Not great news, but could so easily have been a lot worse:

Three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Lebanon, including some of the Middle East's most significant ancient ruins, are in urgent need of repairs after a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the U.N. agency said Monday.

In one case, frescos in a Roman-era tomb in Tyre were shaken to the ground when a building 500 feet away was bombed, said U.N. experts, who visited Lebanon and reported on their findings. Some of the paintings were destroyed.

In the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos, ruins were stained by an oil spill. In Baalbek, another Phoenician city which has some of the finest examples of imperial Roman architecture temples may have suffered structural damage, the experts said.

``Although it was not directly hit and did not suffer any major visible damage, cracks in the stone were probably widened by the shaking caused by nearby bombings,'' said Mounir Bouchenaki, who headed the mission.

Posted by David on September 21, 2006 9:18 AM